Faculty

Which class do you teach online?

BADM 552: Leadership and Ethics and BADM 590: MBA Capstone

In what ways do you connect with online students?

Email, text and Zoom.

What do you want your students to take away from class?

Thinking about thinking. I believe the primary purpose of education is to learn to think differently about the challenges we experience in our professional and personal lives in order to improve our decision-making and our ability to create change. I want you to leave the class with a greater sense of self-efficacy than you had coming into it.

What advice would you give to your online students?

The point of education is not to confirm what you already know but to stretch yourself out of your comfort zone and acquire new and immediately relevant knowledge that you can put into practice. You get out of learning exactly what you put into it. Be prepared to challenge your thinking and take on new perspectives and understandings. That's where the real opportunity for growth begins.

What is the value of an MBA in today's work environment?

The point of graduate education is mastery. An MBA prepares you to be a leader in the complex and global environment of today's organizations. It signals that you are well-rounded and well-prepared to the challenge of leadership.

Why did you start teaching?

I've always been involved in teaching in one way or another! I think the most basic principle of teaching is to have something to give and then give it. I am inspired by my interactions with students and enlightened by their willingness to share their experiences with me. I am a person deeply centered in the idea of hope. I believe that economic justice is the ultimate form of social justice and that the pathway to economic justice is through access to education. For me, teaching is the way that I participate in social justice with the hope of making the world a better place for everyone in it.

What is the one book you think everyone should read?

Images of Organization by Gareth Morgan. This book inspires my thinking about organizations every time I read it. For a novel, I am a huge fan of The Martian by Andy Weir. The story of how the book was written is as engaging as the actual novel. This is probably one of the best treatments of the subject of self-leadership around.

What do you do when you need a laugh?

I hang out with my 10-year old son, my dogs or my cats—in that order! They each have such a great outlook on life and have lessons to share!

Tell us something interesting about yourself that your students might not know about you.

There was a time when I was fluent in Russian, but now—nyet!